‘The Leftovers’ Recap: Episode 8, ‘Cairo’

Just two more episodes to go and things are still roiling in “The Leftovers.” But viewers may have to wait much longer for resolution. (Just this week, HBO said it has ordered up another season of the dystopian series about life in the fictional New York suburb of Mapleton, after 2% of the world’s population vanishes in the inexplicable Sudden Departure.)

The latest chapter once again pits Mapleton Police Chief Kevin Garvey against his chronic nemesis, Patti, the leader of a sect that calls itself the Guilty Remnant, from start to finish. Initially, we see Kevin at home preparing dinner, juxtaposed with footage of Patti, alone in an empty church auditorium, setting out used clothes on the floor. She puts entire ensembles together: shorts, shirt and tiny sneakers for a child; a skirt and dress and necklace for a woman.

The dinner that Kevin is hosting—where he introduces his girlfriend Nora to his prickly teenage daughter Jill and her friend Aimee—is predictably fraught. Jill asks Nora, who lost her husband and two children in the Sudden Departure, why she carries a gun. Nora says because it made her feel better but that she no longer needs to. She then offers Jill her purse, inviting her to go through it and confirm this. Kevin is furious at his daughter’s rudeness but Nora defuses the confrontation. As he is walking her to her car, she assures him: “It’ll get better.” “How?” Kevin asks. “I don’t know,” she replies, “but it will.”

Nora could not be more mistaken—and the snarling black dog tied up behind the Garvey house should have tipped her off that things were about to take a very sinister turn. Kevin tries to fall asleep in bed—and embarks on a grisly, horrific adventure that starts when he wakes up in the cab of his pickup truck. Dean, the mysterious sharpshooter—and dog-hunting aficionado and aspiring buddy of Kevin—has been tapping on the window. It is morning and Kevin finds that and he has fallen asleep in his truck in the middle of the woods.

Completely disoriented, he follows Dean to a nearby cabin. There, Kevin finds Patti bound to a chair, her white clothes bloodstained from wounds around her mouth. “Maybe you hit her a little too hard,” Dean observes. Kevin demands to know what happened the night before. Dean is indignant at his protestations of amnesia and retorts: “This was all your idea!” From Dean’s cryptic account, Kevin believes that he kidnapped Patti and brought her out to the cabin. (The woods are in a place named Cairo, hence the title of the episode.)

Kevin approaches Patti, who is slowly coming to, and concedes, “Things got a little out of control last night.” He proposes a détente: He will free her and bring her back and neither will say anything. But Patti spits in his face and rejects the offer, warning that she will report everything to the authorities and Kevin will lose his job. She goads him, saying “finish what you started, my friend.”

Members of the Guilty Remnant are wondering where Patti is, and Laurie, Kevin’s former wife, seems to be stepping into the leader’s role. One of her first tasks is disciplining Meg, a relatively new member, who has hysterically attacked Rev. Matt Jamison. Rev. Jamison—who also happens to be Nora Durst’s brother—has been trying to peel away GR members with tactics such as publishing smears about individuals who disappeared in the Sudden Departure.

Laurie insists that Meg apologize to Matt, so the two of them walk over to his house. Meg—who has collected herself enough to cease speaking and resume her cult-ordered silence—writes “sorry.” Matt says he isn’t giving up on her. The uneasy peace is broken by Nora, who suggests to Laurie that if she’s handing out apologies, she might want to have a chat with her daughter, Jill.

Jill does seem in need of parental attention. While smoking pot with her friends, she gets into a terrible fight with Aimee, over whether Nora has a gun. Jill is convinced Nora must have one, because there is no way anyone who lost her entire family could ever be “OK” again. Aimee says Jill just doesn’t think anyone could be OK, period. This somehow leads Jill to ask if Aimee has slept with her father, Kevin. Aimee says, yes, she did, and storms off. Jill and her friends, the dim-witted Frost twins, break into Nora’s house to look for the gun. While the twins goof off in the living room, Jill goes up to the bedroom of Nora’s dead son, and finds the pistol in a board game (aptly named “Trouble”) under the bed.

Out in Cairo, Dean is troubled at how Patti seems to be getting the upper hand. She points out to Kevin that there are no public records about his friend—no driver’s license, that kind of thing—leaving him something of “a ghost.” In other words, he won’t be much use as an alibi. “I prefer to think of myself as a guardian angel,” Dean says. He pulls Kevin outside and tries to steel his nerve and get him ready to kill Patti. When Kevin insists he doesn’t want to hurt her, Dean counters: “Oh, yes, you do, after what she took from your town, your family, there have to be consequences.” He despairs of Kevin ever getting the courage to do the killing, and says he will take things into his own hands.

Kevin wanders through the woods and is appalled to come across his white shirts (remember, the ones that went missing a while ago), fluttering from trees around the cabin. He tears them down and gets distraught as he can’t remember what he did and yet sees so much evidence that he has done wrong. He calls Nora’s house and leaves an urgent message. Then he goes back into the cabin and discovers that Dean has tried to asphyxiate Patti. When Kevin tries to pull the bag from her head, Dean attacks him. The two brawl, smashing windows and wrecking the cabin, while Patti gasps to stay alive. Finally, Kevin shakes loose of Dean and tears the bag from Patti’s head. An enraged Dean bolts, warning, “I…wanted to help you. You are on your own, Chief.”

With or without Patti, the Guilty Remnant are getting busy in the church they recently bought from a bankrupt Rev. Jamison. A truck pulls up and Laurie pays the driver for the cargo: What appear to be dozens of corpses of all shapes and sizes—babies and adults—wrapped in brown paper and plastic bags. Laurie mobilizes everyone into carrying the bags inside and pairing them with the outfits Patti had set out on the floor.

Meanwhile, Laurie’s daughter, Jill, arrives home and sees that Aimee, who has been camping out at the Garveys for months, is finally leaving. The two have an awkward farewell and then Jill takes a kitchen knife and heads outside. She walks toward the wild dog tied up in the yard, cuts his rope and frees him.

Meanwhile, Laurie goes into Patti’s office, sits in her chair and peruses the Guilty Remnant’s notes on Nora Durst. There is a knock at the door and Meg opens it to a young woman who asks “Can I stay here?” Laurie looks up: It is Jill.

In the cabin, Patti shows more irritation than gratitude that her life has been spared. Instead, she continues to needle Kevin to kill her. The Guilty Remnant is devoted to remembering the Sudden Departure, she says, because “it’s not going to be long now.” Patti is less specific on just what is going to happen than she is about the GR’s raison d’être.

“We strip away the colorful diversions that keep us from remembering. We strip away attachment, fear, love, hatred, anger until we are erased. Until we are a blank slate. We are living reminders of what you try so desperately to forget.” Kevin, who is too dazed to argue, merely rejects the entire premise. “No, I don’t understand,” he insists. He fails to point out that those in Mapleton who have gone on with their lives are considerably less glum than Patti’s dour, white-clad, lumpen band. Or that there is no explanation for why the GR do little but stare and chain smoke—and work hard to be unattractive.

Patti tells Kevin that Laurie joined the GR not because he failed her as a husband but because the sect gave her a purpose. Kevin heads over to a toolbox, pulling out a knife. “You’re going home,” he tells her. And if that means telling the truth to everyone and losing his job, he is willing to do that. He slices open the tape and frees Patti. But after standing up, she takes a hefty shard of glass from the floor and slits her throat. Kevin runs over and catches her in his arms, asking “What…did you do?” As Patti expires, she murmurs, “You understand.” Blood pours over Kevin’s arms and soaks her white garments.

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